Machine Made versus Hand Made

This is a close-up detail of an appliqued coverlet commissioned in 1937 ... to be made as a matching pair of twin bed appliqued coverlets which is quite an ambitious project that takes months to complete. These are heirloom quality by today's standards because they have handmade 12-to-the-inch stitches and the precision of the parallel quilting is wonderful and difficult. They have intrinsically value, at least to me. No one does this any more by hand that I know of.

A seamstress today could recreate this same art work with a machine and it would be made with even smaller stitches with more perfection, and completed in a fraction of the time with relatively little skill requirement on the part of the seamstress but would it have the same intrinsic value as these handmade ones?

I rather doubt it. Why is that, if the machine made ones are more perfect with even smaller stitches?

It must be the human factor of imperfection.

The best digital images ... no matter how spectacular ... just do not move me as a handmade one does. They are just too perfect. I have the same reaction to retouched photos of famous people or models on magazine covers. It is all so phony and plastic.

Honestly, I would not buy a digital image, frame it, and hang it in my home. I'm not being a snob. It just doesn't say "human workmanship" to me and so it has less intrinsic value. I would value an oil portrait over a photo portrait. Why is that? The photo has to be more accurate.

I've thought about this a lot lately and wondered if I am just resisting change. I don't think so. The too perfect images feel inhuman.

When I have had to create digital images in the past it seemed always a fight to make the image the way I wanted, and there is always the temptation to do things the way the computer wants to do it. Usually it seems that the computer wins because it's tools always render more perfectly than I and that is not satisfying to me as an artist.

To be sure there is a market for digital art, and it will probably grow but it is not for me.

I say, why not just pick up a brush and paint the image? My image will represent the time I have invested to develop my skills, and my imperfections in the painting will be identifiable that it was indeed handmade.